[jIM_Ohio]

As for the mutual fund

If you agree that learning about investing is different than learning about retirement planning, then you can invest in a mutual fund in a regular (taxable) account. The fund I suggested is one I own and on the conservative end of investing in stocks.

If you know a little about investing, then the whole 401k-Roth-deductible IRA decision becomes more about taxes.

Because if you put 10k into a mutual fund now (taxable)
and you are slowly building a CD ladder over next 6 months

you will have about 10k-30k cash in April of 2011. This means when you file taxes in March or April, you can contribute 10k for 2010 IRA and (if you want) 10k for a 2011 IRA at that time.

If it will take you 2-4 months to figure the retirement account info out (my guess), it will take you less time to learn about investing by watching an investment you have, and having a little skin in the game.

I do not often suggest someone "start" investing like this, but your situation is much different.

1) you have high cash flow to save (you are saving almost 2k per month now)
2) you have high cash on hand (started with 90k and even after paying down 30k in debt and investing 10k to play with, you still have about 50k in cash available)
3) all the reading out there can confuse you and give paralysis by analysis... investing is not complicated, just takes a stomach and thirst for knowledge.

If you prefer to be more diligent and efficient in your decisions, you want to read up on the following topics before investing

1) asset allocation
2) risk tolerance
3) stocks
4) dividends
5) index (S&P 500 and wilshire 5000 would be starting places)
6) managed funds
7) bonds
8) dollar cost averaging
9) taxes
10) tax deferral
11) IRAs
12) tax brackets
13) mutual funds

and that is list for starters (read on any one of those and you ask 20 questions)...